When a sender ships a physical item through a shipping vendor to a recipient who is anxious to receive the item, the recipient will typically want to know when the item was shipped. One antiquated way for the recipient to determine shipping status is for the recipient to simply call the shipping vendor requesting the shipping status until the day the recipient receives the item, which is inefficient and troublesome for the both the recipient and the shipping vendor.
Shipping vendors typically resolve this problem by providing a tracking service that provides some type of electronic proof that the vendor shipped the item. However, traditional tracking services provided by shipping vendors, such as UPS and FEDEX, generally only provide the sender a receipt that an item was sent on a particular date or at the time of shipment. Currently, when a user purchases items over the Internet, the user may receive via e-mail a link to track shipment of their packages, including when the item was shipped. The recipient typically has to wait until the item is delivered to verify the content.
Track & Confirm™ by email is an online feature that allows the United States Postal Service® (USPS) to send delivery status information on a sender's mail piece. There are two options: email all activity to-date or email all future activity. Email all activity to-date will provide a single email to each recipient stating the current delivery status information. Email all future activity will generate an email any time the USPS receives a delivery or delivery related event (such as attempted, refused, returned to sender, or forwarded).
While conventional shipping vendors can provide electronic tracking notices that a mail piece, including a package, has been sent from a sender to a recipient, conventional electronic tracking notices are lacking in that they fail to allow the recipient to verify contents of the mail piece prior to receipt.